You Have 3 Weeks To Help A Queer Filmmaker Realize Her Vision Of Love, Loss And Identity
I was on my way to class when I got the email. It was a normal day like any other: near the end of senior year, and I was itching to finish up the next two weeks of college and graduate. My BA! The future! The whole world was open to me. So, when I got the email from our Dean of Students, I promptly deleted it. You see, it had become practice at my (relatively small, liberal arts) school to receive an email from the DoS if a student passed away during the year. There were really no other reasons why that particular email would show up in my inbox. And I wasn’t interested, in this, the second-to-last week of classes, in reading some sob story about a girl I hadn’t known passing away. I just wanted to get on with my day.
So I don’t know what prompted me to retrieve the email from my trash and read it before leaving. Maybe it was curiosity — if a friend of a friend had passed, I’d likely hear about it. I couldn’t have possibly expected that it would be about a friend of mine. But, it was. A good friend. One whom I’d – almost, briefly – been more than friends with.
What struck me about her aside from her constantly upbeat attitude, was her need to create social change. Everywhere she went, she was interacting with the top of feminist scholarship – Steinem, Hillary Clinton, and more were regularly interacting with her, and she strove to make a difference with everything she did.
However, sadly, she didn’t feel she had a personal voice — she never felt completely comfortable coming out. It is the memory of this dear friend that inspired me to approach my friend and collaborator, C.C. Webster, to write a script that reflects both her struggle with identity and my own grief of having lost such an endearing individual.
The resulting script, “Gone,” is a touching and contemplative character piece that resonates with anyone who has lost a loved one. With this film, I’m striving to leave not just a personal memorial, but a legacy – that of being honest, of being open, and of being genuine with those around you.
In “Gone,” we meet Pen, played by Sandha Khin, who is a young woman trying to park her car on the way to a meeting that has her nervous. She receives a phone call from her mom, who reassures her that everything will be fine. Pen parks and heads over to a lemonade stand, where she meets Marcus, a young graphic designer who works in the area. They engage in some small talk before revealing their shared history: both Marcus and Pen at one time had dated Jimmy, a young man who has recently died in a car accident.
Pen still hasn’t dealt with her personal issues over Jimmy coming out as gay, nor has she recovered fully from his recent passing. Marcus, too, struggles with how to deal with Jimmy’s death, understanding that Pen still hasn’t fully recovered from losing her past love. Marcus gives Pen a keepsake left behind by Jimmy, which, in some small sense, brings her closure.
As a member of the LGBT community, some of the things I’ve struggled with aren’t just about the lack of representation of queer characters in film and television, but the fact that, when we do look at those representations, it’s not always written, directed, or acted with honesty.
This statement isn’t made with the intent of casting aspersions. I know the community is one big glass house, and I hope to work alongside others to keep it standing. What matters with this project is, rather, the idea that queer people are three-dimensional individuals — that the LGBT community is not defined entirely by our sexuality. (Marcus is, after all, a graphic designer, drives a Prius, and grieves over a lost love.)
On Set: Producer and Director Miranda Sajdak (left)
A major goal with this film is to reach audiences beyond just the standard queer-filmmaker and queer-film-watcher audience. “Boys Don’t Cry” wouldn’t have rocketed Hilary Swank to fame had straight viewers not championed the film along with the LGBT community. In every civil rights movement, it’s been important to include the perspectives and the aid of allies of the community. Here, I seek to do the same.
Art can liberate peoples’ perspectives in ways that activism cannot. By depicting homosexuals dealing with universal problems, not just LGBT problems, “Gone” will bridge the humanity of two worlds while upholding the importance of being true to yourself and embracing your identity.
My last film, “Snapshot,” played at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Outfest, Melbourne Queer Film Festival, image+nation in Montreal, and I won second place at the Las Vegas Cinefest script competition.
With “Gone,” I aspire to attract the eyes of all cinephiles. I am hoping to bring this film to the bigger mainstream festivals so that our message of equality gets as much visibility as possible. In order for our message to be heard, and in order for that message to make a difference, the film must be produced to the standard that the script deserves. Too often with LGBT films, the budgetary constraints lead to unpolished productions which virtually disqualify them from being accepted in to influential film festivals. When they are only accepted in to LGBT niche festivals, the films only preach to the choir.
So we are turning to the LGBT community to help us raise the funds to make something with the production value to truly stand out. I really want this film to act as a universally accepting message that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, can connect to. I believe “Gone” has the propensity to build bridges and attract positive artistic attention both within and outside the LGBT community.
Please watch our video and consider contributing to a film that wants to make a difference.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1994266099/gone-a-short-film-about-loss-identity-and-moving-o/widget/video.html
Included in our perks is the ability make a dedication to someone you love or have lost. “Gone” is ultimately a film about grief and finding the strength to move on and we hope you’ll find meaning in this option.
Also, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
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Miranda Sajdak (Producer/Director)
Miranda Sajdak is a graduate of the Columbia University Film Studies program. She has worked for many years in productions in both New York and Los Angeles. Recent projects include work on ABC Family’s Huge as assistant to Winnie Holzman, work on Cloverfield, The Bourne Ultimatum, and as Assistant Director for the Elle: Make Better DVD series starring Brooklyn Decker. She recently won 2nd prize in the Las Vegas Cinefest screenwriting competition for her short film Santa Baby. Her last short, Snapshot, which she co-produced, wrote, and directed, played at both Outfest and Palm Springs, among other festivals throughout the world. See Miranda Sajdak’s full list of credits.
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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”
“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”
“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”
READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”
Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.
“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”
“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”
She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.
On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.
We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.
If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping,… pic.twitter.com/bKhpUkchHV
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 26, 2024
Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.
“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”
The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”
Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.
“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”
“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”
Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.
“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”
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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person interview.
“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”
“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”
But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.
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“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”
Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.
1. The media turned Robert Hur’s amateur assessment of Biden’s memory into a political crisis.
Collectively, the @washingtonpost, @nytimes, and @WSJ have run 66 articles quoting Hur: a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”
But when the transcript of the Biden interview… pic.twitter.com/cExzjuKeYz
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 14, 2024
Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”
Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.
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“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.
Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.
Incidentally, when the NYT got a chance to interview Trump, they went belly up. https://t.co/fW5kx5868d pic.twitter.com/LbrhfYMtqf
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) April 25, 2024
Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.
Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.
This is the equivalent of putting a bag of dog poop on the New York Times’ doorstep and setting it on fire. https://t.co/RhGbHH9pU2
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) April 26, 2024
The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.
Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial
‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
OPINION2 days agoPresident Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
OPINION2 days agoNoem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
News2 days agoCNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial